Imagine that a restaurant offers you a coupon on their steak special. You eat your meal, pay for your family’s entrees, go home, go to work, move on with your life, glad that you saved a few bucks on an expensive outing.

The phone rings a month later.

It’s the restaurant.

“That coupon for the steak you had last month is no longer valid,” the voice says. “We need you to pay for that meat immediately.”

“But y’all offered the coupon to me,” you say, remembering the toughness of the sirloin. “I’m sorry, but I paid you in full before I left that night.”

“Yeah, but we’re hurting pretty bad financially and we need to take the coupon back,” the voice says. “You see, we didn’t budget enough for steak. We shouldn’t have issued those coupons. Now, how would you like to pay? We take Mastercard and Visa.”

You make a counter offer to return the steak.

“Just pay up, or we’ll have to take legal action.”

Click.

An absurd scenario, of course, and yes, I’m probably going a little far with a somewhat juvenile analogy.

Nevertheless, this is honestly what I picture when I think of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal to strip the Homestead Tax Relief Grant from 2008 tax bills.

The state asking homeowners to give back the homestead break is like a business asking you to cough up dough for that coupon they gave you last year.

Madison County homeowners just got hit with their 2008 tax bills. Now, they could get an additional bill of roughly $240 if the Georgia General Assembly approves Perdue’s plan to take back the annual tax grant for 2008, a tax break that has been granted to homeowners since the Barnes administration.

No doubt, the state government is in a financial pickle — the kind of pickle that has been dropped behind the counter and rediscovered months later with a horrifying Blagojevich hairdo.

But if the state wants to take away the homestead tax relief, then do it for 2009. Don’t do it retroactively. Taxpayers deserve the courtesy of preparing for the bigger bill, such as adjusting their escrow account to accommodate the change.

Here is the logical and appropriate reaction to everything I just said:

“Well, all right big shot, what do they cut and from whom?”

Yes, that’s the $2 billion question.

Where exactly is Georgia’s “bridge to nowhere?” Is it in some south Georgia peanut field? Well, no.

I’ve sat through enough local budget meetings to know that the big, easy solutions to government financial problems are hard to find. But the elimination of the credit is a major swing of the hatchet. It will eliminate over 20 percent of the state shortfall this year, adding roughly $428 million to budget revenues.

But any swing of the hatchet is a bloody mess. And the state General Assembly is gearing up for a bloody fight on the tax matter.

According to a report Tuesday by Dick Pettys of The Fayette Daily News, “Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers declared Monday that lawmakers ‘will stay here as long as we need to’ to reinstate — at least for this year — the homeowners’ tax relief grant that local governments say they need to avoid local property tax hikes.”

“Georgia taxpayers are having a tough time right now,” Rogers told reporters. “We’ve got to make sure we don’t add to their misery.”

Yes, with the state of the economy, maybe those homestead tax “coupons” must be scrapped for 2009 and beyond. There may not be much choice.

But it’s right to be sizzling mad about forking over a couple of hundred dollars for last year’s broken promise.

I just moved to this messed up state after being injured over seas in Iraq. It servers everyone in this state right they voted Sony back after his first term of being a retard and messing this state up. I hope everyone losses there home and business. You want to cut costs in this state stop giving every buddy at the local masonic loge a job just because he is your buddy does not mean my tax dollars should pay his bills make him get a job and be and better man own his own. I have noticed in the short time I have lived here everyone who works for the county is a friend of someone with more power or a relative. We have jobs that make no since and the city officials how are grossly overpaid. Cut there pay buy the looks of this town they need to make less because they have done little to improve this town. You cant even find the recreation department because its a dugout but the BOC have a new building they don't need. This town need to be revamped the good news is the old people in power have to die one day.

Easy fix to your problem and dis-satisfaction with our fine State and great county. Pack up and don't let the sun set on your un-happy opinionated rear end. You are right about Sonny he is a joke but we have to live with him a liitle longer. As for the county, Chairman Dove when given a little more time, will get a handle on our county issues and get the most bang for our buck. After all it took Wesely 12 years to get us in this shape the Chairman can't fix it over night. As for the Rec Dept how can you miss a 30 acre complex on a major highway? And to make a statement hoping everyone will lose their homes and business is way beyond comprehension. You need help packing?

Yea I would love to leave this joke of a county the sad thing is I cant sell my land. Know one wants it or can afford to buy it. The last place I wanted to move to was madison county but, I bought this land ten years ago when I first joined the army. Since then I was hit by and IED in Iraq and can no longer afford to live the way I did and had no choice but to move back here. This county is a Joke to every county around it. Most people in this county dont even want to send there kids to the school system and the ones who have any money in this county (and how few they are) send there kids somewhere else. I also see you didnt have anything to say about how over payed the employees of this county are. You want to make more money here why not start selling liquor and stop giving all that tax money to clark county, Stop with the retarded animal control, cut back on the employees at the tax office there are more people in that office than in a tax office in a major city, cut back on cops most of them on night shift are asleep on hwy 29 after 11pm anyway (dont believe me drive down 29 at midnight and pull off to the left after you pass the kangaroo bet he will be asleep as he is most every night I go buy I stopped one time just to see and yep he was snoring)waste of money, these buddies of town hillbillies need to go and get a group of people that want to help this town not just there buddies.

Dude, you bought land here and yet you seem surprised that you are living amongst ignorant hillbillies? Did you not drive around for a few minutes before you bought your 10 acres? The fact that this county is chock full of ignorant inbreeds, meth heads, and most of the rest are just plain dumb hillbilly rednecks is obvious whether it's a trip to the grocery store, the courthouse, or just a drive through the county. No sympathy for you, man. If you didn't want to live in the most backwoods county with one of the dumbest populations in the state, you should not have chosen to live here.

Where did you come from that they don't run the government that way, Jim? Chicago? (hahahahaha)

Thanks for your service to our country... but be my guest and go back where you came from.

Hoodoo... if it was Democrat leadership, I suppose he would just want to raise the money some other way. A new tax on something, perhaps, right? Only difference being he would not be so up front about it.

Like it or not, the Governor can not "mess up" a state on his own. It takes lots of other people to help. I am sorry if that doesn't mesh with your party line. Go drink some more Kool-aid.

If the legislature is unable to fund the tax relief grant, I fully expect Madison County government to make enough budget cuts to off-set the revenue shortfall. Where the cuts should come from, I have no idea, but the commissioners were elected to make those types of decisions. We as citizens should accept whatever cuts are necessary or fork over the extra $235.00 in taxes.

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